It’s the question I get in my DMs and from junior engineers all the time: “Which DevOps certification should I get?” Usually followed by, “Are they even worth it, or just a cash grab?”
Let’s just get this out of the way: Yes, they are worth it. But not for the reason most people think.
A certification isn’t a magical piece of paper that instantly makes you a $150k/year engineer. I’ve interviewed people with a wall of certs who couldn’t explain the difference between a load balancer and a reverse proxy.
The real value of a good certification is twofold:
- It gets you past the HR filter. This is the practical, boring-but-true answer. Recruiters and in-house talent teams use certs as keywords to filter a stack of 200 resumes down to 20. Your cert is the key that gets your resume in front of a human.
- It provides a structured learning path. This is the real personal value. The DevOps landscape is massive. A good certification curriculum forces you to learn the fundamentals you might otherwise skip. It fills in the “gaps” in your self-taught knowledge.
The biggest mistake I see people make? Collecting certs like Pokémon. They get the “DevOps-in-a-box” cert from some random vendor and assume it’s the same as a pro-level AWS cert. It’s not.
What a hiring manager wants to see is commitment and relevance. Your certification needs to prove you can solve their problems on their platform. That’s why the best devops certifications are almost always tied to the major platforms (the cloud providers) or the non-negotiable, open-source standards (Kubernetes).
Let’s break down the certs that actually move the needle in 2025.
The Kings of the Hill: Cloud-Specific DevOps
You can’t have “DevOps” without the “Ops,” and “Ops” lives in the cloud. You have to pick a side, or at least, pick one to start with. A “general” DevOps engineer is useless without a deep understanding of at least one cloud platform.
1. AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
AWS Certified DevOps engineer – Professional: This exam is a beast. I’m not going to sugarcoat it.
This is not a beginner certification. AWS explicitly states you should have the Associate-level Solutions Architect or Developer cert before you even think about this one. They’re right. I’ve seen people jump straight to this, fail, and get completely demoralized.
What it proves: This cert shows a hiring manager that you don’t just use AWS; you know how to automate, secure, and manage it in production. It’s a 3-hour exam that hammers you on:
- CI/CD: How to build robust, multi-stage, multi-region deployment pipelines using the full suite of AWS tools (CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline).
- Monitoring & Logging: This is huge. You need to know CloudWatch and CloudTrail inside and out. Not just “look at a graph,” but “how do you create a metric filter on a log stream that triggers a Lambda function to remediate a security breach?” See the difference?
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Deep knowledge of CloudFormation (and, increasingly, the AWS CDK) is non-negotiable.
- High Availability & DR: You’ll get complex scenario questions about blue/green deployments, canary releases, and failover strategies.
A person with this cert tells me they’ve felt the pain of a production outage and know the tools to prevent (or fix) the next one.
2. Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400)
If AWS is the “startup-to-enterprise” default, Azure is the “enterprise-first” giant. Millions of companies already run on the Microsoft stack (Windows Server, SQL Server, .NET, Active Directory). For them, moving to Azure is a natural extension.
Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400)
The AZ-400 is their top-tier DevOps cert. It’s interesting because its focus is slightly different from the AWS one. While the AWS cert feels like it’s testing your mastery of dozens of discrete services, the AZ-400 tests your mastery of the Azure DevOps toolchain.
This cert is all about:
- Azure Pipelines: This is the heart of it. You need to be an absolute wizard at building YAML pipelines for CI/CD.
- Azure Repos & Azure Boards: It tests your knowledge of the entire dev lifecycle, including source control (Git) and Agile planning (Kanban/Scrum boards).
- Infrastructure as Code: Here, the focus is on ARM Templates or Bicep (Microsoft’s newer, cleaner IaC language) and how they integrate with your release pipelines.
If you work, or want to work, in an “enterprise” setting (think finance, healthcare, retail), the AZ-400 is often more valuable than the AWS cert. It shows you understand how to bring DevOps practices to large, established development teams. You must first have either the AZ-104 (Admin) or AZ-204 (Developer) cert to get this, which makes sense.
3. Google Cloud Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer
Google’s cloud (GCP) is the dark horse. Tech-wise, it’s brilliant. It’s the home of Kubernetes (which they invented). Companies that are all-in on K8s, data engineering, and machine learning often love GCP.
Google Cloud Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer
This certification is heavily focused on Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), which is Google’s own “DevOps” philosophy. You’ll be tested less on a specific toolchain and more on the principles of running high-availability systems.
- GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine): You must know GKE. Period.
- Monitoring: Deep focus on Google’s “Stackdriver” (now called Cloud Operations) suite.
- SRE Principles: You’ll be tested on concepts like SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets.
This cert is a bit more niche, but in the right circles (think data-heavy tech companies), it’s a huge signal.
The Great Equalizer: Kubernetes
Ten years ago, the core skill was a cloud platform. Now, that’s just table stakes. The new foundational layer is Kubernetes.
Kubernetes is the “operating system” for the cloud. It doesn’t matter if you’re on AWS, Azure, or GCP—Kubernetes works (mostly) the same everywhere. This makes skills in it incredibly portable and valuable.
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
This is, in my opinion, the most respected and valuable certification in the entire tech industry right now.
Why?
It is a 100% practical, hands-on exam.
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
There is no multiple choice. No “drag-and-drop” questions. You are given a remote command line, a set of broken Kubernetes clusters, and a list of tasks to complete in 2 hours. Tasks like “The cluster-B kubelet is down, fix it,” or “Create a new deployment with these specific network policies and resource limits, and expose it.”
You cannot fake this, you either know how to administer a cluster, or you don’t. You run out of time, and you fail.
No multiple-choice safety net here.
Passing the CKA tells a hiring manager something profound: you can handle pressure, you can debug real systems, and you know your stuff at the command line. It’s a signal that’s as strong as a good technical interview.
If you are wondering where to put your money for 2025, the CKA is probably the single best investment.
A quick note: The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) also offers the CKAD (Certified Kubernetes Application Developer), which is great for developers, and the CKS (Certified Kubernetes Security), which is a beast of a cert for specialists. But the CKA is the foundational “DevOps” one that everyone should aim for first.
The “Must-Have” Tool Cert: Infrastructure as Code
If Kubernetes is the OS, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is how you write the “drivers” for it. You cannot have a modern DevOps practice without it. And while the cloud providers have their own (CloudFormation, Bicep), the industry has largely standardized on one open-source tool.
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate
This is probably the best first certification for anyone starting their DevOps journey.
It’s more accessible than the CKA or the pro-level cloud certs, but it teaches the single most important concept in modern operations: managing infrastructure as code.
Terraform is the universal translator. You use one language to define your infrastructure (VPCs, subnets, servers, K8s clusters, load balancers) and it works with AWS, Azure, GCP, and hundreds of other services.
Passing the Terraform Associate exam proves:
- You understand the IaC workflow:
write,plan,apply. - You know how to manage state (the “source of truth” for your infrastructure).
- You know how to write clean, modular, and reusable code (using Terraform modules).
When I see this on a resume, I know I’m not going to have to spend weeks teaching a new hire why they shouldn’t be clicking in the AWS console to build a server. They just get it.
The “Real World” Certification Trap
“But what about Jenkins? Docker? GitLab? Ansible? Puppet?”
This is a common pitfall. People see a tool and hunt for a certification in it.
Here’s my advice: with a few exceptions, certs for specific, single-purpose tools aren’t worth the money or time.
- Docker (DCA): This one is… okay. But Kubernetes has so completely eaten the container orchestration world that your CKA is infinitely more valuable. The CKA presupposes you know Docker.
- Jenkins (CJE): Jenkins is the old workhorse, but a cert for it feels dated. Most companies are moving off Jenkins to more modern, integrated platforms like GitHub Actions or GitLab CI, or the cloud-native ones (CodePipeline, Azure Pipelines).
- GitLab/GitHub: They both offer certifications. And they’re fine. But again, no one is hiring you for your GitLab cert. They’re hiring you for your AWS/K8s/Terraform skills, and they just expect you to know how to use Git and a CI/D tool.
Don’t spend your money on a tool-specific cert unless a- your company is paying for it, or b- you work at a place that is deeply, deeply committed to only that tool. Stick to the platform and standard certs.
Okay, So What’s the Actual Roadmap?
If you’re starting from scratch, here is the path. This is the devops roadmap that I give to every single person who asks me for help.
Step 0: The Non-Negotiables (No Certs Needed)
- Linux Command Line: You must be comfortable in a terminal.
- Git: You must know
git clone,commit,push,pull, andmerge.
Step 1: The Foundation (Pick One)
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate OR Microsoft Azure Administrator – Associate (AZ-104)
- Why? Stop. Do not go for the “DevOps” certs first. You must learn the “Ops” part first. You need to know what a VPC, a subnet, an IAM role, and a storage account are before you can automate them.
Step 2: The Core Concept (The “Bridge”)
- HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate
- Why? This is the perfect second step. You just learned all the cloud “parts” in Step 1. Now, you learn how to build and manage those parts as code. This solidifies your cloud knowledge and teaches you the core DevOps skill of IaC.
Step 3: The King (The “Standard”)
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
- Why? Now that you know a cloud platform and you know IaC, it’s time to learn the cloud-native “OS.” This is the hardest, but most valuable, step. Take 3-6 months. Study hard. It’s worth it.
Step 4: The Pro-Level (The “Specialization”)
- AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional OR Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400)
- Why? You’re finally ready. After mastering a cloud, IaC, and Kubernetes, this “DevOps” cert is no longer a certification—it’s a validation of the skills you’ve just spent the last 1-2 years building. This is the capstone.
This roadmap isn’t fast. It’s not easy. It’s probably 18-24 months of serious work. But that’s the point.
A certification isn’t a shortcut. It’s a map for a long journey. The piece of paper at the end just proves you walked the path. When you finally sit down for that interview, the cert is what gets you in the door. The stories you can tell about what you broke, what you fixed, and what you built while studying for it… that’s what gets you the job.
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